


I'll Keep Setting Us Both on Fire

by oceans4jinyoung



Series: The Habits You Forgot to Outgrow [2]
Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - High School, Companion Piece, M/M, Poetry, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23289016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceans4jinyoung/pseuds/oceans4jinyoung
Summary: Jaebeom knows he's not perfect.  He knows he's quick to anger.  He knows he's no good at saying how he feels.  But he hopes the letters that he tucks into Mark's corners will speak louder than his actions.This is a prequel to Favorite Worse Nightmare.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Mark Tuan
Series: The Habits You Forgot to Outgrow [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674832
Comments: 19
Kudos: 47





	I'll Keep Setting Us Both on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/oceans4jinyoung) and [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/oceans4jinyoung)!!

It was detention when it first started. Jaebeom had forgotten why he was there. Truthfully, it didn’t even matter. He had a presence that made teachers want to restrain him, just to prove they could. And while he sat in that classroom with the ticking clock maddening his thoughts, he scribbled into his notebook. Jagged lines under the harsh grind of his pencil. Just something to get out the innate anger that he tended to rush to. But as he scraped deep gashes in the lined paper, he thought of Mark. As he often did in those early days. Ever since Jackson and Yugyeom and him had smoked cigarettes underneath bleachers during the homecoming assembly. Ever since Jaebeom looked through the slats and saw Mark drumming out a cadence that was as meticulously perfect as the drummer in question.

Jaebeom sat in detention, thinking back to how the boy had looked, showing up to the first practice after Jaebeom had recruited him. Standing at the edge of Jaebeom’s driveway. Nervous and willing. And the way he drummed on the second hand kit Jaebeom had salvaged from a yard sale down the road. Uptight and self-conscious.

And it was then that the scribblings in his notebook started to take shape in ways they rarely did. Not just jagged lines, but words. Words that held too much honesty and sincerity to murmur. Words he couldn’t hide behind. And once they started to spill out, he couldn’t keep them in anymore.

_My eyes weren’t at peace until they found yours. Always searching. For the beauty in the paralyzing mundane. The softness in the innate grit. The respite in the endless uphill. But my eyes don’t search anymore. For you are the beauty and you are the softness and you are the respite that has the power to drown out everything else._

_My mouth won’t be at peace until it meets yours. Trying to speak of you too often. As if murmuring your name will mimic your taste. The one I fear I’ll never know. Because when I say good night from my side of the tracks, I hope to not rest at all. But instead, to busy your mind. To occupy your dreams. Stave off your nightmares. So give me that peace that only your mouth holds so I will not exhaust myself any further._

Jaebeom sighed and it felt like the first breath he’d taken since meeting Mark. He tore out the paper, folding it up into a square that fit in the palm of his hand. And the next day, when practice came, he slipped it into Mark’s stick bag when he wasn’t looking.

They practiced again, a few days later. It was dark and raining by the time they finished. The streetlights illuminating the downpour. Jackson had already driven off in the van, taking Yugyeom with him. And Mark was walking off to catch the bus.

“I’ll see you,” he said, casually. About to step just past the cover of the open garage door where the concrete went from light to dark.

“Wait,” Jaebeom called. He rummaged around. Grabbing his keys. “Let me drive you.”

“Jaebeom, it’s fine.”

“Get in the car, Mark.”

He drove them down a street no one knew about. A place he and Jackson and Yugyeom used to come before they could drive wherever they wanted. There were no streetlights. Just the railroad tracks laid out in front of them. Jaebeom threw the car into park, turned off the ignition, and killed the lights.

Leaving nothing but moonlight and silence.

When Mark finally broke up the quiet, his voice was nervous. “I liked your letter.” 

Jaebeom felt his stomach push up acid into his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Why?” Mark questioned. “Did you change your mind?”

“No,” Jaebeom said. “That’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You could have just told me.”

“Stop,” Jaebeom gritted through his teeth.

“What?” Mark huffed a laugh. “If you wanna kiss me-”

“Mark,” he warned, looking over to him. His eyes doing the begging that he couldn’t manage with his words. Not knowing what he was begging for.

Mark’s eyes were bright. He was biting at his lips. Perfect teeth and perfect lips. Constantly at odds with each other. His tongue slipping between them like the peacemaker. Exactly where Jaebeom wanted to be. Mark carefully enunciated, “So give me that peace that only your mouth holds. So I will not-”

Jaebeom lunged over the console, hand fisting into Mark’s shirt and yanking him close. Pressing his lips into Mark’s to stop the sound. The embarrassing repetition of his words. His weakness.

He bit into the flesh of Mark’s mouth, punishing him for flooding him with shame. He put a hand to the back of his neck to hold him closer. To keep pressing. Further and further. “I’m going to start driving you home,” he panted.

Mark nodded against him. “Okay.”

\---

“Let me take you somewhere,” Jaebeom said, turning the car down a road they hadn’t been before.

And when they stood on the stage of the amphitheater, Mark looked to him. “What are you thinking?”

Jaebeom shook his head. “I don’t know how to say it.”

Mark dug in his backpack, finding a pencil and a crumpled up math test. He turned it over to the blank side, handing it over. “Write it.”

_Before you, the only dream I ever had was to be bigger than this town. And I didn’t even know what that looked like, but some days, I swear, it was all I could do to not drop to my knees and worship whichever god who promised it to me._

_But now, you’re here. And when you look at me, I don’t care about anything but giving you the world. But I wasn’t born with the world to give. I wasn’t born with anything but a mean streak and talent for thrashing. I don’t have anything. Except for my word. So I’ll offer you that instead. My word that one day the whole world will be ours. And I won’t stop thrashing until I can give it to you. But until then, I’ll willingly drop to my knees and worship you._

When Jaebeom was done, he folded it up into a square. He looked up, surveying the seats and the stage but Mark was nowhere to be found. He rushed. Calling for him. Breaths in his chest going frantic. He pushed through the door backstage. Rattling door handles until he found him. Sitting on a couch in a waiting room. Arms stretched across the back.

“Show me,” the boy said, eyes bright under the fluorescents. 

Jaebeom slipped Mark the folded square. He sunk down between his open legs, letting his hands push up the boy’s thighs and into his lap. He eased his jeans off his hips and worked him between his lips. And when the curses fell from his perfect mouth, it was the most beautiful music Jaebeom had ever heard.

\---

They had their first show. And it was at a roller rink because no real venue would take a bunch of high schoolers with bad reputations and Mark. They even had to lie and tell the owners that Yugyeom was seventeen as well in order to book it.

It wasn’t a good show. They were half drunk on nerves and half drunk on Jackson's brother's beer by the time they played. And they sounded terrible. They didn’t know how to balance the sound yet and the rink didn’t have the best acoustics. But they were loud and they were exciting and it was obvious to anyone watching that they had heart and that was enough to get the menial excuse for a crowd worked up.

And when it was over, their ears were ringing and their blood was rushing and Jaebeom couldn’t take his eyes off of the sweat soaking through Mark’s white t-shirt. So while Jackson and Yugyeom loaded the van, Jaebeom pushed Mark to the floor of the empty DJ booth and covered his body with his own.

“You’re gonna fuck me right here,” Jaebeom said with his hand around Mark’s cock, voice drowned out by cheesy pop music.

“Fuck, Jaebeom,” Mark whined before manhandling him onto his stomach.

And they didn’t know what they were doing and it burned like hell when Mark sank into him but he didn’t care. And when Jaebeom started getting too noisy, Mark’s hand clasped over his mouth to keep him quiet. And when his thrusts got more clumsy, that hand slipped down to Jaebeom’s throat and squeezed tight. And Jaebeom rutted himself into the neon technicolor carpet until he had nothing left to give.

They got better at it over time. They figured out how to use lube. But Jaebeom still preferred it with Mark’s hand around his neck.

There was one time when they were trying to get out to the tracks but Mark’s hand was in Jaebeom’s lap and his grip on the steering wheel kept growing weaker and weaker. He turned into the parking lot of the toy store that went out of business two years ago. They clamored into the backseat, fingers working under clothing and lips pressed to the skin. And Mark was about to sink into him when there was a knock at the window.

Jaebeom leaned up against his car, the officer giving him a lecture that he couldn’t even hear because he was too busy watching Mark’s face through the back window of the cop car as it drove off towards the other side of the tracks. 

The next day, Jaebeom saw him in the hallway. He pulled his sleeve, trying to get his attention.

“My parents are pissed, Jaebeom,” Mark said, quietly. Eyes looking around, making sure no one heard. “Really pissed.”

“So, you’re just gonna quit?” And Jaebeom wasn’t sure if he was talking about the band or something else.

“I don't know,” Mark walked away. “I don’t know.”

Jaebeom spent all of math class scribbling.

_I kept thinking about how those cops were the first people to bear witness to us. And it bothered me so much. Cause it wasn’t for their eyes. It was only for ours._

_Society favors a weaker bond. It creates this system of approval as a means to cement people together based more on expectation than feeling. This system of labels and witnesses and specific milestones. And it suggests that what we have isn’t valid until it has those things._

_But I know. I know that when you see me, and no one else is around, you run into my arms like I’m the home you want to come back to. And I know that when I stare at my ceiling in the middle of the night that I’m trying to commit to memory everything you’ve ever said to me. And I know that when we move together through the dark, all teeth and grit, it’s only because we are frustrated with how intensely we can feel._

_It’s bigger than our parents, our town, our shared dreams. And there’s no label for that. There’s just the need to keep feeling it. Over and over again._

A few periods later, he sought Mark out. Pulling his sleeve again. Dragging him into a janitor’s closet and locking the door. Putting hands in his hair and teeth to his lips and tongue to his taste. Slipping that folded square into his back pocket before falling to his knees.

\---

“I’m trying to get into Juilliard next year,” Mark said as he was taking off his shirt.

“Juilliard? What’s that?” Jaebeom murmured, his hands already on him, pushing him down onto his bed.

“A music school in New York City. The best in the country, Jaebeom. In the world.”

“Wait,” Jaebeom kissed his neck, murmuring into it. “You aren’t staying here?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. Get up here,” he gripped his hands around Jaebeom’s ass, dragging him on top. 

And it didn’t really hit him until he was waiting for Mark in the car, cutting it too close to the boy’s curfew. He leaned over, finding a receipt and an old pen in the glove compartment before he started to write against the steering wheel. 

_If you leave, I might forget. I might forget train tracks and cop cars and love letters. Forget how your laugh sounds when you’ve had too much to drink. Forget the war between your lips and your teeth and the way they taste when I try to stop it. Forget how I never knew peace until I found you. And I fear forgetting._

_But I fear remembering too. Remembering ringing ears and amphitheaters and the words I wasn’t man enough to say. Remembering how the backseat of my car felt when you sunk into me in more ways than one. Remembering how you always burned too hot when you were in my arms. Remembering how I promised you the world and never delivered it. And I don’t know which is worse._

_I don’t want to forget, but I also don’t want to need to remember. I want you by my side always, brightening my days like no one else can. Telling me when the anger I always rush to is futile. Holding me close and giggling in my ear. And I know I have messy parts where the grease won’t ever lift, but I hope that you’ll have me in spite of them. Because if you leave, what will this town hold for me anymore? What will this world hold for me anymore?_

When he was finished, he slipped it into Mark’s stick bag in the passenger seat and looked up. Mark was walking up in the glare of the headlights. And it took the breath from his chest.

When they parked outside Mark’s parents house, Jaebeom spoke up. “You know,” he shrugged. Trying to make it as casual as he could. “You should take a year off.”

“What do you mean?” Mark said, gathering his things.

“I mean, what’s the rush? The band’s getting good. Getting shows.” He was too scared to meet his eyes. “You should just see where it takes you.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Mark said, raising his chin with his hand and kissing him goodnight.

Jaebeom lips were warm the whole drive home.

\---

It was the middle of the night. And it was raining so hard. There was a knock at the door and Jaebeom answered it. He brought Mark in. Peeled off his wet clothes. He took him to bed. Let his cold, damp skin warm up. Let him cry into his chest.

“They kicked me out,” he sobbed. “They said if I’m not going to college, then I can’t come back.”

“I know,” Jaebeom sighed, his hand against his sopping hair. But he didn’t really know. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he’d done. “I know.”

He let Mark wear himself out until he was fast asleep. And he sat at his desk and scratched out the words that he couldn’t say. Folded it into a square. Slipping it under Mark’s hand as the sun came up.

_My life has been a sky of falling stars. Never staying long enough to warrant naming. Never guiding a follower like me anywhere but the places I already know. The places I have always been. Before those stars inevitably flicker out._

_But now I look out and I’ve never been so transfixed. You in my doorway. Soaked to the skin. Like you can’t exist without a sky, a name, a follower to guide. But I don’t want you as just a coordinate in my sky, lightyears away from me. Too distant to feel your warmth. I want you to be the Sun. The one I never stop naming in every language I know. The one I build mythologies around. So that you never have to question whether you exist again._

It was mid-day. Jaebeom was working on his car, elbows deep in grease. He felt the press of hands at his waist. He turned to see Mark pulling him closer.

“I’m gonna get you all dirty,” he smiled, showing off his blackened hands.

“I don’t care,” Mark shook his head. “I want all of you. Even the messy parts.”

Mark wore Jaebeom’s greasy handprints like a badge of honor.

\---

It was a year before he made Mark regret those words.

They were still in that piece of shit town, but now playing shows full time. They had an apartment with Jackson and Yugyeom. Four bedrooms. Though Mark rarely used his own, perfectly content sleeping in Jaebeom’s instead. Even if no one in the house knew how to talk about it.

It started out like just any other show. But Jaebeom should have known by the way the guy watched from the front row. Not paying him any mind as he sang. Fixated totally on the drummer. When the set ended, Mark was nowhere to be found. And when he finally discovered where he was, the scene added up too quickly. Back of the van. Shirts off. Eyes wide. 

Jaebeom didn’t know what to do. So he did the thing that came most natural to him. He thrashed. Thrashed until everything was a blur, until he looked down at the asphalt of the parking lot and saw the stranger’s arms holding his middle, his face twisted in pain. Mark screaming Jaebeom’s name, pulling at his shoulders.

Jaebeom drove Mark out to the tracks. He didn’t stop thrashing. He just redirected it. Putting it all onto Mark. “You’re mine,” he gritted out. “All mine.” He tasted the blood on his lip when he kissed him too hard. Like it would wash away the taste of anyone else. “You pull that shit again, I swear to god. I’ll toss you out. You won’t have anywhere to go.”

And afterwards, when they were both naked and spent, Jaebeom reached up, trying to hold his face.

Mark’s head felt heavy and limp in his hand. “Just take me home,” he said, quietly.

Mark stayed in his own room that night, door locked from the inside. And Jaebeom’s mind refused to quiet. So he wrote.

_The anger has always been the easy part for me. Years from now, I’ll be sitting across from either a shrink or a prosecutor. And they’ll tell me it has something to do with my childhood. They’ll say something in me got carelessly mishandled. Until anger was the only real language I knew how to communicate in._

_Because the anger is always so much easier than the truth for me. Easier than saying that I’m thinking of all these things I wish I could stop thinking about. Like the day I first drove you out to the tracks and tasted you for the first time and I never wanted to taste another. Or when we had our first show and your body became an extension of mine and I never imagined I could feel so tangled up in someone. Or when I took you in and let you cry onto my chest and promised myself I’d never be the source of your tears. These are the things I can’t stop thinking about. But I can never just say them. It always has to be the anger._

_And it takes a moment like this, where the only taste on my tongue is your blood that you unwillingly shed for me, to realize that the anger doesn’t just burn me up from the inside. It burns you too. And it shouldn’t be like that. There should be a better way. But until I find it, I’ll keep setting us both on fire._

Jaebeom read it over. Once, twice. He folded it into a square. Before he ripped it into pieces and threw it away.


End file.
